Description

Evolutionary Immortality Triumphing
As The Missing Link Of Evolution,
Or
Evolutionary Teleology

byThe Star Circle andWilliam W. Aber & J.H. Nixon

The late 1800s and early 1900s saw a heightened consciousness towards spirituality that included much research and the search for truth. This was evident in the churches through the revival craze, Azusa Street Pentecostalism (which is a form of Spiritualism), Salvation Army, and the great orators and writers within Christianity.

However, this heightened consciousness was not limited to Christianity. This same time period birthed a revival in Theosophy, alternate religions, Socialism, and Spiritualism - or talking with the dead. Many of the great spiritualists have been forgotten through time and history. Part of the demise of Spiritualism was due to the media exposing many frauds and quacks that attached themselves to the movement out of greed for a quick buck.

Christianity is facing the same scenario a hundred years later, as it only seems to beget the quick buck preacher or evangelist, and the movement is rife with fraud and quacks. There also is a dire vacancy in Christianity of intelligent, truthful researchers and scholars that it was blessed with in times past.

This series of books was not compiled for pleasure reading. The authors and compilers indexed every paragraph, thoroughly cross referenced across three books, outlined texts, topical highlights, and more. These do not make for easy reading, but then again their purpose for compiling these books was not for pleasure, but to document every detail in their personal experiences in Spiritualism. These books would never see a best seller's list, so they were not published for any gain or profit.

Some of their contacts in the spirit world would have opened them up to ridicule and scrutiny if their efforts and research were not fully documented. These serious researchers were not in the business of talking to a dead loved one, while fleecing the grieving widow. They were not charlatans - they were truth-seekers. Even Christians have to admit, if they are not hypocrites, that Spiritualism is biblically documented and used by actors in the Bible, and if the Bible is true, then they must accept that Spiritualism is also true.

From the Introduction

This publication being the third of a series : "Rending the Vail," "Beyond the Vail," and "The Guiding Star," it is presumed that the readers of this have read the two former, and will readily discern that the three books were produced in very nearly the same way; hence explanation given in the first and second books need not be repeated in this book, except to a limited extent; but the reader will find that he or she, is kept in connection with such similar, corroborative and explanatory matter as thought desirable by appropriate references, and a liberal use of the index of each book.

For such purpose, the reader will readily observe that the three volumes are fairly well paragraphed, and the paragraphs of each consecutively numbered by the appropriate figures placed in the left margin at the beginning of the paragraph; and that frequently, paragraphs have subdivisions marked by letters of the alphabet, and that references are made to paragraphs, subdivisions and pages, by the appropriate symbols placed in parentheses.

For further convenience some abbreviations are used, such as R. V. for "Rending the Vail," B. V. for "Beyond the Vail," G. S. for "The Guiding Star," Par. for paragraph; and where page is meant, the word page is spelled in full. The vinculum - is sometimes used, denoting the elliptical words: From, to, inclusive.

For instance: As often as it is repeated in the two former books, that the writing, speaking, picture making were always done by some spirit in visible form while standing before and in sight and hearing of the whole circle, some persons, who say they have read these accounts, still ask us; "Why, could you see the specter? Could you hear it talk? Could you see it write ? Could you see it while it was making a picture ?"

Something historical of the mediumship for the production of these books, might be expected here; but, perhaps, we only need to say, now, that the band of spirits having charge of this work, finally succeeded in getting together and combining the phases of two mediums; one for materialization, and the other forgiving out mental aura for forms through which intellectual spirits could, more or less perfectly, express their own mentality for the benefit of human beings in the physical life.

Excerpt:

1.The apparent futility that has attended all efforts to prove the Immortality of man springs largely from the fact that a sense of Immortality is an achievement in morals, and not an inference drawn by logical processes from the nature of things. It is not a demonstration to, or by the reason, but a conviction gained through the spirit in the process of human life. All truth is an achievement. If you would have it at its full value, go win it. If there is any truth whose value lies in a moral process, it must be sought by that process. Other avenues will prove hard and uncertain, and will stop short of the goal. Eternal wisdom seems to say : "If you would find Immortal life, seek it in human life; look neither to the heavens nor the earth, but in your own heart as it fulfils the duty of present existence." You are not mere minds for seeing and hearing truth, but Beings, set in a real world to achieve it. This is the secret of creation. But if demonstration cannot yield a full sense of Immortality, it does not follow that discussion and evidence are without value. Mind is auxiliary to spirit, and intellectual conviction may help moral belief.

2. Doubts may be so heavy as to cease to be incentives, and become burdens. If you discover any hints of Immortality in the world, or in the nature of man, you must welcome them. If there are denials of it that lose their force under inspection, you must clear your minds of them : For so you shall be freer to work out the only demonstration that will satisfy you.

3. Whatever is here said upon this subject has for its end, not only demonstration, but a clearing and paving of the way to that demonstration, which only can be realized by personal experience. Or we might say, our object is to make an open and hospitable place for it in the domain of thought. This result would be nearly gained if it were understood how the idea of Immortality came into the world.

4. It cannot be linked with the early superstitions that sprang out of the childhood of the race with Fetichism and Polytheism and Image-worship; nor is it akin to the early thought that personified and dramatized the forces of nature, and so built up the great mythologies. These were the first rude efforts of man to find a cause for things, and to connect it with themselves in ways of worship and propitiation. But the idea of Immortality had no such Genesis. It is a late comer into the world. Men worshiped and propitiated long before they attained to a clear conception of a future life. A forecasting shadow of it may have hung over the early races; a voice not fully articulate may have uttered some syllable of it, and gained at last expression in theories of Metempsychosis and visions of Nirvana.

5. But the doctrine of personal Immortality belongs to a later age. It grew into the consciousness of the world with the growth of man, slowly and late, and marked in its advent the stage of human history when man began to recognize the dignity of his nature. It does not belong to the childhood of the race; nor can it be classed with the dreams and guesses in which ignorance sought refuge; nor with the superstitions through which men strove to ally themselves with nature and its powers. It belongs to them neither in its history nor in its nature. It came with the full consciousness of selfhood, and is the product of man's full and ripe thought. It is not only not allied with the early superstitions, but is the reversal of them. These, in their last analysis, confessed man's subjection to nature and its powers, and shaped themselves into forms of expiation and propitiation; they implied a low and feeble sense of his nature, and turned on his condition, rather than on his nature, in a sense of the external world, and not on a perception of himself.

6. The assertion of Immortality is an acknowledgment of nature's forces. This fact should not only separate it from the superstition, where, of late, there has been a tendency to rank it, but secure for it a large and generous place in the world of speculative thought. We should hesitate before we contradict the conviction of any age that wears these signs of development; nor should we treat lightly any lofty assertions that man may make of himself, especially, when those assertions link themselves with truths of well being and evident duty.

7. The idea of Immortality thus achieved, naturally allies itself to religion. For a high conception of humanity is, itself, religion. It built itself into formulations of Christianity, and became, also, its atmosphere, its main postulate, its acknowledged working factor and its ultimate hope. It is of one substance with Christianity, having the same conception of man; it runs along with every duty and doctrine, tallying at every point; it is the inspiration of the system; each names itself by one synonym-life. Lodged, thus, in the convictions of the civilized world, the doctrine of Immortality met with no serious resistance until it encountered modern science.

8. It may have been weakened and obscured in the feature of personality by pantheistic conceptions that have prevailed from time to time, but pantheism never will prevail in a hurtful degree so long as it stands face to face with the freedom of your Western civilization. A slight infusion of it is wholesome and necessary to correct an excessive doctrine of individualism, and to perfect the conception of God; and it has never gone far enough in its one line to impair the substantial validity of the doctrine of Immortality.

9. But when modern science, led by the principle of induction, transferred the thought of men from speculation to the physical world, and said : "Now get at facts, and find out what your six senses reveal to you," then, Immortality will no longer be under question, because science would find no place for it, Science, as such, deals only with gases, fluids and solids; with length, breadth and thickness. In such a domain, and amongst such phenomena, no hint, even, of future existence can be found; and science could only say: "I find no report of it."